 Welcome everyone to Lillian's Beacon World Aloha. Today I'm coming to you from gorgeous sunny Honolulu and I'm here to introduce one of my fellow Aussies from Down Under. Please welcome Natasha Konyu to the show. Good day Natasha. Hi Lillian how are you? Good I haven't I haven't used that expression in a long time but I felt it very appropriate this morning. It's nice to hear. I know. Welcome to the show Tash. So awesome to have you on. Thank you very much for having me. I did want to introduce you to the viewers. You are a meditation and yoga teacher and you've recently moved to gorgeous Hawaii, the Oahu part of Hawaii. So welcome to the show and welcome to Hawaii. How's it all going big move and settling in? Oh no it's been a really interesting that I moved here in January and really just had enough time to move into a place and then found myself in a new and exciting world where things are shut down and everything's changing. So it's definitely been an interesting move. Well I can yes to say the least I can imagine that with what you do with your meditation classes and yoga and stuff I can imagine that this has been a very interesting time in that you've been able to get creative and really pull some people and classes together to to get through this you know very difficult time. So I'm looking forward to hearing all about it. First of all Natasha tell us about what it is that you do in your classes. You do a particular type of meditation. Yes that's right. So at the moment and since we've been in the pandemic I've predominantly been teaching a meditation technique called iris which is a it's a modern form of a practice called yoga nidra and it's a self-inquiry practice which can really be used to bring about some positive changes in your life and helps you really get in touch with what's going on with yourself. Well I was very very lucky and fortunate fortunate enough to not only meet you but to also you know participate in these classes and I know I've told you several times but honestly they've they've really helped me personally. You can you can live in gorgeous Hawaii but still find negativity you know if that's if that's where you're headed. So what you do in your classes it's quite it's uplifting but it does make you stop and think and really to quote what you said find the joy in every moment in life. You know it does make you more aware of that and how you can you know find happiness and and find a way to get through this. So Tash tell us how do we focus on the good aspects of life during times like this? Well we're posed with a lot of challenges in times like this being forced to not be as social as we have in the past or not have as much contact with people and especially even just walking around with masks on all the time it can really change the way that you perceive the outside world because you're not receiving you know a lot of sensory input that you might be receiving from other people. I mean just with the face mask on you can't see the beautiful smile that most people are walking around in their faces on like with their faces normally. And if you are not in these regular patterns of having contact with people it can be quite easy to to lose that connection. So we've got all these wonderful platforms like electronic platforms like Zoom which is what I've been teaching on which give us that opportunity to be reconnected. But it's also about how you actually use them because you've always got a choice and say no I don't want to do that and you can be a little hermit and and sit at home and have a pity party and about whatever what is wrong with everything in your life. But you know sometimes it's nice to stop and reflect and say is that actually really helping me or not. That's where meditation practices can really come into being because they are and it's particularly with iris that it's designed so that you look at more of the broader spectrum of things. It recognises that you know our reality is made up of of duality. We only know joy and happiness because there's some sort of sadness or some sort of suffering in the world. And you know that by reconnecting in with both of them you you increase your perspective on what's really going on around you. So that's the the meditation practice I think and that's where it has the best benefits. But it also teaches us like some interesting little bits that we can take away into our everyday lives and we can learn about a concept that we're using this practice called inner resource which is about our own personal sense of safety and security and when you know your whole entire world around you is changing because of dramatic you know social upheaval or you know major changes in your life you know you need to be able to tap back into having that sense of security. So you know that that in itself is is a practice that it can just be conducted at a moment's notice just by simply taking a few moments maybe closing down your eyes concentrating inwards taking a few deep breaths and then just concentrating on what it is to be you know safe and secure just in this moment. Tash as you're talking I find myself quite hypnotized by by your voice. I've mentioned this to you before and and what you do is so awesome I I do hope that anyone out there who's watching the show does you know consider getting in touch with you because these classes really really do help I must say they have helped me tremendously but what you said now it's so it's so true isn't it you can do this any time at the day anywhere that's one of the beauties of meditating isn't it and still there are so many people that have never ever tried it. Yes that's right. So you know although my show is it's about you know the vegan lifestyle and plant-based diet there's so much more to to a healthy you know well-rounded lifestyle isn't there and definitely your well-being you know your mind your well-being is just so so important so I think if if anyone is feeling a little bit sort of down and out there is there are lots of things you can do to you know get out of that funk or out of that little you know little hole that you're digging yourself into Tash I want to show the first slide that you've prepped for us Melissa can pull that up about core concepts this is I find very very interesting so if you don't mind can you just go through it a little bit with us. Oh no certainly so this iris meditation that I've been teaching it is based upon this yogic practice called yoga nidra but it's a it's a modern day adaptation so there's no religious connotations to it you know you don't have to be a hindu or you know you don't have to om and levitate or whatever or whatever you think yoga might be to actually form you know this practice but what it is is this real sense of self-inquiry into who I am as a being and in in the the yogic philosophy we have this belief that there's there's all these different layers to our being you know we have a body but we're not just our body we have our energetic body which we feel through our breath but we're not just our breath we have our mind and we have our thoughts but we're not just our mind and our thoughts we have our beliefs and all those things that come from our self-conscious but we're not all of those and so what this practice actually does is is tries to take us through each of all of each of the different aspects of our being so that we can try and reconnect with our core with what what it truly is in our essence the process of actually doing so just it's almost like magic you know it it makes things change because you you open up your your sense of perception to what's going on around you you generally start to have better relationships it helps just go through allow like even your thought processes to finish their natural cycles so that you know at the end of night at the end of the day you might feel like it's easier to go into sleep and so that's why people see so many different benefits from the practice and whatever they're really trying to to get out of the practice you go into it with an intention which helps to solidify why you're actually doing it and help bring about the the positive aspects that most people are searching for. That is so interesting this irish meditation i had never heard of until i met you and i've been telling friends about it because i think this is i think this could really hit off like a lot of people would be would would benefit from getting to know more about this and it's going back to what you said just now about how you know it makes you sort of reach in within yourself and find that essence of who you really are i think that's where your meditation and my lifestyle on a plant-based diet really connect and vibe very well because i i'm of the belief that i don't think any of us intentionally want to harm animals for example if we're talking about the vegan lifestyle somehow it's gotten to the point where you know we kind of think or assume that we have to you know eat certain things to to live a healthy lifestyle but deep down inside i think i think that's what's interesting to me about meditation is that you start asking yourself more and more questions about who you really are what you really want what is really happening around you without you know without any any interference from anyone else or the outer the outer world because when you're meditating you're really working just with yourself aren't you and the energy obviously around you is very important but um yeah i love what there's a lot of similarities there so uh just as we eat food and we digest it we assimilate it into our body you know we need to do the same thing with our thoughts and they're all part of our being you know the the food that we eat absolutely nourishes our body the thoughts that we bring into our mind and that we cultivate the relationships that we cultivate they feed our lives so they're much related absolutely here's just a quick question why is it that we kind of all know what we're supposed to do to make ourselves feel better we all know that we should eat you know healthy we should exercise we should i don't know drink less you know meditate more uh think more positively what what is it tush that we're doing wrong that that gets us into that funk where it doesn't seem to work uh you said this is a word that i always put i always point out to people in my classes when i start to talk about thoughts and beliefs is like uh the should what should we be doing um i always find it interesting uh when i hear myself saying that when other people say that too because uh should indicates that there's some sort of resistance to what we actually want and um you know that that should say it says to us that there's some sort of conflict going on with what we're actually experiencing and what uh we would like to be experiencing or what we're resisting in our lives and the meditation practice is actually about how can we just allow things to be as they are to accept things as they are and so slowly over time maybe the shoulds die down because we're becoming more accepting of who we are and where we are and then change just naturally happens that's such a that's such a good way of putting it and you make it sound so easy it's not but the thing yeah the thing is it's it's not that easy but i i kind of think it can be so tash we're gonna get back to you after this quick break and talk more about you know what we can do to focus on on finding a better way to move ahead in the covid times and ahead in in life in general so stay tuned everyone we will be back after this short break aloha i'm kisha king host of crossroads and learning on think tech hawaii on crossroads and learning our guests and i discuss all aspects of education here in hawaii and throughout the country you can join us for stimulating conversations to enrich and live in and educate we are streamed live on think tech biweekly at 4 p.m on mondays thanks so much for watching our show we look forward to seeing you then aloha welcome back everyone to lilians vegan world i'm here with tash sorry natasha konyu i'm used to referring to you as tash a bit tash konyu who is a meditation and yoga teacher here on aloha in gorgeous hawaii welcome back to the show again tash thanks lilian lovely to have you on um so we're talking iris meditation you know just ways in general of how you can um just be happier healthier more mindful of yourself who you are what your beliefs are and uh you're here to help us do all of that tash you did send us in another slide that i do want to show first of all just you know so that people know how they can get in contact with you so if you tell us a little bit about what what we can do to to get in touch with you that would be awesome oh no that's fine um so at the moment um i am only teaching a limited number of classes on zoom uh but i do offer a free iris meditation class every week which is on wednesdays at 11 a.m for anyone who would like to try it out they're more than welcome to uh go through the link and um and and sign up to the class um exactly and you can be from anywhere in the world now that we're doing all this online so not only for people in honolulu anyone yeah anyone who's out there can do this with us a lot of people are there's people in that class that that are actually calling in from australia and even from the mainland us wonderful so do get in touch uh anyone out there watching and give it a try i mean this for me this has opened up a whole new world and i think at my age at my stage in my life it's exactly what i need you know you think there there are times i think when you get when you get to your you know middle-aged um chapter in your life and you kind of think well i know what i want now i know who i am you know you become more set in your ways but in fact i find that for me maybe i've become a little bit more vulnerable and a little bit more open to ways that i can actually improve a lot of things including especially my well-being so tash tell us tell us about the um what you think about the face mask era that we're in because as you mentioned before this has changed a lot of a lot of how we interact just as people and it's very unnatural for us isn't it given that you know our face and our expressions provide so much information when you're interacting with another person so i don't know what's your insight into all of this well you're exactly right the way that we communicate is not just our words and with the pandemic going on everyone's being told you know you're social distance don't hug you know shuckers not shakes you see this and that that's a dramatic growth in the way people are used to interacting and once you create that distance you then start to rely on other you know more subtle aspects of of the way that you communicate which is is your facial expressions which are hard being covered up most of the time um so it can be very easy to fall into a trap of like feeling like you're you're there's a boundary between you and everyone else in the world uh or you know you you if you're have a bit of a negative mindset you have a bit of a bad day you might start to project that out and just assume that everyone is is doing exactly the same thing so it can be really hard to to see what's going on and the good in everyone else with these masks um so what's a really good practice to do is a few times a day when you go out make the personal connection with someone who's wearing a mask uh because for us to actually have a connection with someone um it's not as simple as just saying hi how are you as you're walking past and uh you know you would have done this you you say hi how are you and the other person says something that doesn't even respond to that question that you answered or it's an automatic thing that they say um but you can make a connection by simply pausing for two seconds make by contact with the person so that you can feel the personal resident like resonance that you are there with with another human being and like really genuinely saying from your heart how are you today and pausing just for the response um it doesn't sound like much and realistically it might only add an extra you know 20 or 30 seconds into your day you know because you say hi how are you and maybe you ask them something you can say oh how do you feel about the masks because everyone will have their own opinion about it you know or you could even be a little bit cheeky like uh someone suggested to me one day which was if you meet someone like hi how are you and then just quickly pull it off and throw them a big smile you know so think about it a little bit creatively going we've got a barrier here but you know there's plenty of ways that we could think about creatively how we can overcome those and it's just about taking that extra few seconds to create a moment of connection with someone when you when you're interact with them that is so well said and such good good advice it's funny you know because you you can you can have someone say something to you so randomly that can really change your day you know you could wake up on the wrong side of the bed and someone will walk past and say nice t-shirt or something and it really it immediately uplifts you makes you feel better and when you think about it it costs nothing to do that yeah to interact with someone not in a creepy way like we we do have to be careful now yeah we we want to do this so that um no one gets into trouble but it but it is so true and i think uh i think it life in general what you're saying is um it only takes a few minutes to make a huge change in other people's lives and your own because when you see that you've said something which which to you might not be such a big deal could actually be you know a huge a huge deal to someone else and if you see how happy that you've made them it actually does make you feel really good as well so win-win situation i love it i'm gonna i'm gonna practice that today i'm going to do say something to someone randomly today and enjoy it thoroughly and it's it's that's the wonderful thing because you know you can already just talking about it we can understand what that connection is and when you just do that um you know maybe two three four five times a day it creates a real difference in your mindset because you're suddenly seeing more positive things in the world changes the way uh you look at everything else yeah so true maybe you know we're stuck with this situation this is where we are at so whether we we can choose to complain about it all the time every time we have to put the mask on or we can you know completely turn it around and just make it make it a fun thing to do how you know how we can go ahead wearing these masks but still still be ourselves at the same time and I think that's what we need to be able to do as you said find a way to get get rid of that barrier that seems to be blocking us between you know some normal interaction with other people um Natasha what do you think about this phrase that I hear often in Hawaii called is it um island feeble they refer to it as you know stuck on an island all the time not being able to to get off the island or or wanting I should say to get to you know get off the island go on a trip somewhere else so my question to you is does living in a place like let's let's be realistic Hawaii is one of the most loved islands in the world we're so lucky to be living here would you say that it's uh it's helped us in a way to get through the the COVID-19 times or it does it have does the warm weather the sunny weather the opportunity to go out into nature you know in warm weather does it do you think it affects us in any way um being in nature I think is yeah it's fundamental to helping us reconnect we can get so stuck in technology and behind computer screens and in front of TVs and and everything all the time that we sort of lose contact with everything that's going on so getting back to nature is just a fantastic way and and there is so much beautiful nature here I mean I may maybe slightly biased I'll have a slightly different perspective because I've only been on the island for a short period of time so everything was new to me but I have been I felt like quite blessed because despite um everything closing down the ocean still open the outdoors is still open and there's so much that you can go and do um so I've uh since I've been here I I feel like I haven't even really missed out on much I'm like oh okay well I haven't been out to bars or restaurants or um you know some of the the big tourist attractions and the like but I've been to all these wonderful hikes um I've explored different parts of the island I've been swimming with the turtles so many times I keep being told by my friends they just don't want to hear about that on facebook anymore yeah and I know that for for people maybe living in cities that's that's more of a challenge or in places where they haven't had as much freedom to be able to get out outdoors so then they have to become a little bit more creative but it really becomes about paying attention to what uh like or trying to bring about like you know a sense of creativity to what you're actually doing um you can go I want to spend some time in nature but go okay well where haven't I might have been like where haven't I been or I have a hike that's close to where I live um so I do that every week but I never get sick of that every time I'm there I look for a new plant or I look for a new side trail that comes off of it and I consider it just like a little bit of an adventure that I can go out and have every day um so it's all about the way that you look at what you're actually doing to determine how much joy that you get out of it if you're willing to see the joy and experience fully the joy every single time you go and do something you will feel a lot more you receive a lot more benefits from it basically I I couldn't agree more this is a nice segue this conversation into the next slide Natasha that I wanted to show of you look at this gorgeous paradise that we live in I know it's beautiful I have a friend who shot that photo um yeah how stunning is the the environment wow it is it is a gorgeous shot no no doubt about it so this is this is where you and I get to live it's stunning you look amazing in that photo there's another a few more about a few more that you sent us where's this one taken Tash um that's actually makapu point so um I do like getting out hiking and trying different things so you can go up the road or if you're a bit of a hiker there is another little trail which is close to scrambling up the rocks around some bunkers which is where a friend and I went out to go and explore a few weeks ago to you know do the same thing that we've done before but just do it slightly differently beautiful and one more slide we've got there we go gorgeous where uh another hike over on windward side um the crashing lion that's beautiful Tash and and what great advice I I couldn't agree more like get out in nature whether it's cold or hot it doesn't really matter you know if you're in a cold place rug up and get out and get that energy that mother nature gives to us all for free and if you're if you're in Hawaii you know there's so many opportunities I recently thanks to you have learned or am learning how to paddleboard something I would never have done uh pre-covid times because I would just normally say let's go out for something to eat and drink so what you said is true you know now we're being we're we're given the opportunity to to do things differently and I hope that we do um find a way so that we we move ahead in these times in a healthier manner and a happier because at at the end of the day it's all about you know being happy that's what we're put here for I think yes absolutely Tash thank you so much for coming on it's been awesome talking to you I do hope that anyone watching gets in contact with you stay safe and healthy oh sorry just one quick one I did forget to say there was a link before www.ires.org um that's actually got some free meditations if anyone wants to try them out that came to mind fantastic fantastic yes definitely we'll uh make sure that we'll put that in the link on the show if for anyone who does want to watch it back so get in touch with Natasha Kony thanks so much Tash have an awesome day and to everyone else out there uh I wish you all a wonderful day take care it's a state holiday today so um get out get some fresh air and enjoy life see you next time on Lillian's Vegan World Mahalo